Microsoft’s Windows Recall feature is attracting controversy before even venturing out of preview.
Microsoft said in its FAQs that its snapshotting feature will vacuum up sensitive information: “Recall does not perform content moderation. It will not hide information such as passwords or financial account numbers. That data may be in snapshots stored on your device, especially when sites do not follow standard internet protocols like cloaking password entry.”
Mozilla’s Chief Product Officer Steve Teixeira told The Register: "Mozilla is concerned about Windows Recall. From a browser perspective, some data should be saved, and some shouldn’t.
Jake Moore, Global Cybersecurity Advisor at ESET, noted that while the feature is not on by default, its use “opens up another avenue for criminals to attack.”
Moore warned that “users should be mindful of allowing any content to be analysed by AI algorithms for a better experience.”
Cybersecurity expert Kevin Beaumont was scathing in his assessment of the technology, writing: “In essence, a keylogger is being baked into Windows as a feature.”
AI expert Gary Marcus was blunter: “F^ck that. I don’t want my computer to spy on everything I ever do.”
And not just that, but each distro of linux has its own quirks and each one is compatible with a different list of brands of hardware. you could brick your system if you install the wrong distro on the wrong hardware, like down to the bios
And contrary to popular belief, LINUX CAN GET MALWARE JUST AS EASILY AS WINDOWS CAN.
With windows, there’s a 30 year history of malware infections and there’s several good choices for windows based antivirus programs, and three amazing ones. The people who work at those antivirus companies know how vulnerable windows is and so they’re always working on improving their software…at least the good ones are, but those same antivirus programs on linux don’t have nearly as much stuff in them to fight against APTs most linux versions of great antivirus programs like comodo and kaspersky are gutted down to just a regular antivirus with heuristics, no zero-day threat protection at all, you’re completely dependent on how fast the new malware can get added to the blacklist.
But on windows, if you use comodo and know how to configure it and understand that it will never pop up unless something might be wrong, you’re always prepared for zero-day threats and even zero-hour threats.
Linux used to be super secure, simply because there were so few people using it or even aware of it, but with every linux distro being open source, malware-makers can make all kinds of exploit kits for it in record time, because there’s no trial an error like there is on windows, at this point in time, no antivirus company is really prepared to deal with zero-day linux malware.
But windows users, even stupid ones know that you need an antivirus program on windows. So the malware-makers have to play a cat-and-mouse game with windows malware if they hit a decent number of systems with their malware, that malware isn’t going to be unknown for very long. And antivirus companies like bitdefender and avira, the former of which is great at adding new samples to the blacklist at super speed, and avira which isn’t as good at that anymore because they got bought by…norton? If I remember correctly, they rent their database out to other antivirus companies, Eset, another really good detector of new malware also rents their database out to other antivirus companies.
ClamAV is good at detecting linux based malware…as far as I’ve heard, but it’s useless against anything unknown to it.
windows is a pain in the ass to detail with…but that’s only if you don’t know how to work with it. Linux can be that way too. If there’s a bug in some software that fucks up parts of your OS, there’s not much support you can get from local techs, but if something like that happens with windows, there’s loads of freelance independent computer techs out there that know how to fix it.
Linux is cool, if you can make it work for you, great! But don’t act like windows is worthless. There’s ways to deal with the bloat, and there’s endless amounts of free advice on countless forums across the entire internet on how to deal with problems that come up
Honestly, I have Windows working just the way I want it right now (and I do know enough to be able to wrangle it to do just what I want it to do), but I could do without so much spyware. That’s the main reason I’m looking into Linux. Any way you know how to get rid of Windows’ built-in spyware without impacting security at all or breaking anything too badly?
On a different note, I have actually been looking for a new antivirus, preferably a free but very good one. Norton (my dad subscribed to it and got like 10 license keys years ago and shared with the family) has become too much like adware for me in recent years. Your comment has been helpful with that.